While discussing his award-winning show “Chernobyl” with Princeton students and staff in a Zoom meeting last Thursday, Craig Mazin ’92 drew a marked difference between Communism and “communalism.” The former: a government system that historically failed in its implementation. The latter: a culture devoted to shared interests and well-being and committed to the idea that another person’s life is as important as one’s own.

In a statement from the Office of Communications on Tuesday, April 14, the University announced a number of changes to its financial aid program. The University trustees also “reaffirmed the University’s commitment to affordability despite the economic challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

In an email to the student body on Thursday, April 16, Dean of the College Jill Dolan clarified the University’s positions on transcript notation, P/D/F, adjusting final exams, and University-affiliated summer opportunities.

In recent weeks, University researchers in fields ranging from epidemiology to urban planning and computer science have abandoned their usual work, as they turn to the global threat posed by COVID-19. As researchers grapple with the unprecedented crisis, the pandemic has given rise to new angles of study and insight.

Today marks the 15th anniversary of my mother’s death. I was six years old, but the faces of the first responders rushing up the stairs to my parents’ bedroom have never grown fuzzy in my mind. I never got the chance to thank those men, but now, more than ever, I wish I had.

Three University researchers have been awarded grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study how to track, model, and understand information about pandemics like COVID-19. The grants are part of the NSF Rapid Response Research (RAPID) program, which funds work that responds to imminent and unanticipated events — like global outbreaks.

Though Princeton has just admitted its class of 2024, we are only a few short months away from the beginning of the next admission cycle. In addition to forcing school closures across the country, COVID-19 has caused the postponement of college entrance exams (SAT/ACT) until deep into the summer, if not later.

In her junior year, a friend of Yale senior Joshua Monrad suffered from a mental health crisis, which caused her grades to slip. Later, she looked into the possibility of receiving an institutional endorsement for prestigious fellowships in the United Kingdom. The friend — whom Monrad counts among “the smartest people [he] knows” — was told to forget about it, because her grades weren’t good enough despite still meeting the competitions’ requirements.

On Wednesday afternoon, President Christopher L. Eisgruber ’83 wrote to the members and families of the Class of 2020 announcing the cancelation of this year’s Commencement ceremony due to coronavirus. In-person festivities will be rescheduled to “the days just before Reunions 2021.”

“I don’t think we’ve ever seen Eliot look so happy as he looks in these wading pictures. It’s very unusual,” Professor Susan Stewart of the University’s English department remarked toward the end of her interview with Sally Foss, former student and friend of Emily Hale — the source of much interest due to her correspondence with famed poet T. S. Eliot.

In a presentation live-streamed on Tuesday, April 14, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Chief Economist Gita Gopinath GS ’01 predicted that 2020 will see the most significant reduction in global economic output since the Great Depression, as the world battles the COVID-19 pandemic.

John Horton Conway, the John von Neumann Professor in Applied and Computational Mathematics, Emeritus at the University, died on Saturday, April 11 from complications arising from COVID-19. The 82-year-old mathematician, famed for his invention of the “Game of Life,” is the first University faculty member known to have died from the novel coronavirus.

Before she was the general manager of the award-winning Princeton Soup & Sandwich Company (PSAC), Alex Ruddy was a 12-year-old girl standing on a milk crate behind a register, too short to meet her customers’ eyes. She had many hopes, dreams, and plans for the future. Most of them included food. None of them included saving her family’s restaurant in the wake of a pandemic.

A week after University researchers submitted proposals related to COVID-19, the Office of the Dean for Research announced funding for seven “rapid, novel and actionable” projects on Friday, totaling $587,000 worth of grants.

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly every aspect of campus life has become digitized. While there are some extracurricular activities that simply cannot be held over Zoom, intramural sports refuse to be left behind.